The invention refers to a therapy device comprising a blood pressure measurement device and a regulating means with a time-variable regulation of the blood pressure of a patient during a therapy procedure, in particular to a therapy device for extracorporeal blood purification.
In various therapies, e.g. in hemodialysis, it is necessary to constantly monitor the blood pressure of a patient. To this end, apparatus for a non-invasive measurement of the blood pressure are used that comprise a sleeve to be placed around an arm of a patient, are inflated and then slowly relaxed while measuring the pressure. To achieve a quasi-continuous blood pressure regulation, the regulating means has to perform regulating operations at intervals of a few minutes. The number of blood pressure measurements required for this purpose during a treatment of several hours can be reduced substantially if, at defined moments, the blood pressure measurements are substituted with blood pressure values obtained from previous treatments of the same patient.
European Patent Application EP 1 226 838 A2 describes therapy devices with an interval-like blood pressure measurement and with a reduced number of measurements. Based on the equal length of all intervals, e.g. 5 minutes per interval, the regulating means guarantees an evaluation of the blood pressure profile and the blood pressure trends in each interval according to uniform rules, as described in EP 0 956 872 B1.
Since multifactorial causes have to be considered with respect to morbid events during hemodialysis, such as hypotension, vertiginous attacks, vomiting and the like, monitors for other parameters (e.g. ECG, relative volume of blood, hematocrit, amount of oxygen contained in the blood) are sometimes used in clinical practice to detect complications. Depending on the measurement results, this may lead to requirements for additional blood pressure measurements. Clinical experience with dialysis patients show that, depending on the condition of the patient, sometimes also the medical staff is required to take blood pressure measurements directly.
It is thus an object of the invention to arrange a therapy device with a reduced number of blood pressure measurements such that a time-variable blood pressure control is possible.